


Under Alcyone's Light

by Random_ag



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine, is it though? barely. very barely
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, I Need Yall To Tell Me If This Is Good Or Not Please My Crops Are Dying, Song Lyrics, but shes good with astronomy, kim is a myth nerd, niamh just fucking dozes off at one point and stops listening, niamh sucks at it, oh shit they are together, or part of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 12:44:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17244440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: Grieving can be a little lighter if someone is at your side.





	Under Alcyone's Light

Kim was just dozing off when he felt a soft pressure rise from the bed (on which they were sleeping  _together_ , back to back, as impossible as that could have sounded to him at any point in his life) and leave so quietly he was sure, had he been any less awake, he wouldn’t have ever heard it.

He turned his head slightly, just to have a better view. He was already alone.

He slipped out from under the covers.

 

Niamh sat in the backyard under the glowing full moon, shivering a little in her pijamas while looking up to the sky. She turned sharply to face him as soon as she heard the door open gently behind her; her eyes were red like they had been scrubbed several times.

 

“Are you alright?”

“Ya think this is an ‘alright’ kinda face?”

 

They remained still for at most five seconds, staring tensely in each other’s eyes.

 

“Yeah, that wasn’t the best question I could have asked.” Kim admitted quietly as he deflated in embarassement. She rubbed an eye to scare salty drops from falling down her chin, giving him a gentle apologethic smile.

“Can I try that again?” the man tried, while his arms motioned to question whether he could take a seat beside her. Niamh nodded, shuffling a little bit to give him more space. “What’s wrong?”

 

“… My… My Nanna died.”

 

His hand flew into hers without even giving him time to think.

 

“Not- this year, I mean, it’s-” Niamh interrupted herself, sucking in a wavering breath, “I was… Eleven? Twelve? So it’s, it’s been… Fifteen years, since… since then. But I- … I still bawl me eyes out as if I’d just recieved the news right now and I’m away and she just- She-”

He chest rose abruptly as she rubbed her eyes some more, so hastily she almost punched herself in the cheek. Kim tightened his grip slightly, sustaining her with his arm as his hand kindly squeezed her shoulder.

 

“I can spend three hundred and sixtyfour goddamned days in a fucking row accepting that this is a thing that would have happened no matter what and being fine with everything that this brings, but as soon as today comes over the weak-arse earth opens up under me and I plummet all the way down into this fucking shitty depression.” he heard her whisper through sobs.

 

Kim held her closer. She felt so tense.

 

Kissing her temples and rubbing her back wasn’t nearly enough to properly help, but it was a start. Niamh eased up slowly, her shoulders finally slumping with a watery sigh accompanied by a dozen repressed tears streaming down her cheek, freed at last.

 

“Why did you go outside to mourn your Nanna?” he asked; in his voice there was just a gentle curiosity without malice.

“She… She used to tell me, when people died, they would go in the sky to power up the stars. So every year I… Mourn by stargazing.”

Immediately, like a hedgehog preemptively rolling up in a spiky ball at the smallest sign of danger, she added: “It’s stupid, probably, but it… It makes me feel so much closer to her. Even just, in a figurative sense.”

“I think it’s very sweet.” assured Kim as he kissed her newest teardrops away. His thumb pressed carefully against her palm, calmingly, soothingly, until her crying quieted down to an end.

 

“Where is her star?”

“Uh?”

“Your Nanna’s star, the one she powers. Can I know where it is?”

“Oh, it’s, uh… There. In the Pleiades. The one in the middle.”

“Alcyone?”

“Yes, that’s her. Looking over me, and the others are her… her smile.”

“Do you know why they’re up there?”

“It’s ‘cos the pressure in their ol’ nebula made the nuclei of their helium’s and hydrogen’s molecules fuse.”

“…That was… Very specific. And scientific.”

She huffed, a little proud: “I used t’ be really into astronomy, y’know? I think I can still list all of Jupiter’s moons if ya asked. Not alphabetically, though.”

“Well, now I feel stupid.”

“Y’ sounded like y’ know another reason they’re there. I don’t think I know it.”

“It’s just a Greek myth. The kind you read of in elementary school. I bet you’ve heard it a dozen times already…”

“No I didn’t. No one told me shit about the Pleiades’ backstory.”

“Really?”

“Never in me life.”

Kim fidgeted a bit with his fingers: “Can… Can I tell you?”

“I’d love for you to do that.”

 

His excited smile grew bigger than Niamh had ever seen, and his eyes were a match to Alcyone’s brightness. She realised she had momentarily lost the ability to breathe in his presence only when he began to tell the tale.

 

“Ok, so… The Pleiades, they used to be seven sisters, daughters of the titan Atlas, who held up the skies. They were each more beautiful than the other, and because of this a giant huntsman named Orion became infatuated with them.

But he porsued them so agressively, they had t run away from him. That didn’t help, though; he just kept following them everywhere they went, until they had no more breath in their lungs. Zeus felt pity for them and tried to save them by turning them into doves, so they could fly out of Orion’s reach.

Still, Orion wouldn’t give up. So Zeus decided to put them in the sky as stars, forever free from the hunter’s chase.

 

At least until Orion said he would kill every existing animal and Gea the Mother Earth got mad and made a scorpion sting him to death. Then he too went up in the stars and now the sisters escape the hunter followed by the Scorpio.”

 

Niamh snorted a little: “That son of a bitch! …” she giggled weakly, head falling on Kim’s shoulder, “Got his ass handed to him!”

“In his defense, he isn’t like that in  _all_  the myths…”

“What’s that s'pposed t’ mean?”

“He’s not always there just because he was an asshat.”

“Really?”

“Yes! Usually, people say he’s over there because he and Artemis - the goddess of hunting and the moon - were very in love, and her brother Apollo was really jealous of them.”

”Why’s that?”

“Probably because most of his crushes preferred to turn into plants or jump off cliffs rather than reciprocate him.”

 

The chuckle that came out of the woman’s lips was so lively and genuine, it made him weak and colored his cheeks purpura.

 

“A-as we were saying, Apollo. He became so envious, he dared Artemis to go on a cliff and shoot a fish they could see from up there. Of course, she hit the target, but when she went down to take a better look at it the only thing she found in the waters was Orion, impaled by her own arrow.

All she could do was paint him in the night sky, where he’d be close to her forever.”

 

Silence coated the backyard for a little.

A car alarm went off a couple blocks away, but silently, as if to not dirsturb them.

 

“God damnit, Apollo.” Niamh muffled against Kim’s shoulder, angry eyes reduced to slits. “Just had t’ go an’ be a  _shet_.”

Kim giggled, causing her head to bounce up and down: “A good summary!”

The Irishwoman slithered her strong arms all around his waist, nuzzling his neck affectionately. He hugged back, trembling slightly; the night wind was blowing a little harder, making the air kind of chilly.

“You know other myths?” whispered Niamh.

“I have enough to go on for days.” Kim replied, playing with her hair barely reaching her shoulder, “But it’s a bit too late now…”

She curled up closer against him: “I don’t think I can sleep.”

“Can we come back in, at least? I think we’ll get a cold out here.”

Niamh waited a little more, holding him tight. “I never get cold.” she murmured finally, rising to her feet with him. They closed the French window behind them.

 

“You want a cup of tea? Since you can’t sleep.”

“No, no, thank you. Go back t' bed, you must be so tired…”

“I’ll stay with you.”

“Don’t worry, go back t’ sleep. I’ll be fine.”

“I want to stay here with you. Please…”

 

With slow movements and quiet words they ended up laying on the living room’s sofa, barely illuminated by a lamp’s soft light. Niamh turned on her side, her head resting on Kim’s chest as her rocked her gently.

She cupped his cheek in her hand, looking into his dark golden eyes, and gave him a small but warm smile that lit up her face and the dim room like the moon shining above their roof.

“Thank you.” she murmured.

He interwined his fingers with hers and kissed her head: “It was nothing.”

“It means a lot t’ me.”

 

Silence never sounded sweeter.

 

Everything seemed as if trapped under a glass lid. They could barely hear their own breaths curling around each other in the strong shadows.

 

Even when Kim spoke, breaking the pristine sound-less immobility after what felt like hours, his voice sounded impossibly quiet.

 

“I bet… I can make you fall asleep.”

 

Niamh’s playful response was just as hushed.

 

“I’d like to see you try.”

 

His arm slowly slid away from her body, reaching for his phone.

Carefully, he turned it on so that the screen’s light wouldn’t bother his love, his fingers moving across it until they found what he was looking for; as soon as he tapped, the first notes of a quiet, low song rose in the air around them.

 

_[“I must have left my house a eight, because I always do…”](https://youtu.be/zLl0QuiDihU) _

Kim’s voice reverberated through his thorax.

 

_“My train, I’m certain, left the station just when it was due…”_

Gentle vibrations welcomed Niamh’s ears with every soothing word. 

 

_“I must have read the morning paper going into town…”_

With every note the brass hit, he gently drummed two fingers on her arm. 

 

_“And having gotten through the editorial, no doubt I must have frowned…”_

Who knew he could sing so nicely?

 

The tune came out of his lips flowingly, dreamily, and it seemed to take the shape of a trail of white smoke puffed by a bored deity to amuse the children who hadn’t been caught by the torpor of sleep yet.

 

Of the Milky Way as it sprayed itself across the dark empty space that made up the universe, shining brightly among its sisters so far away from each other.

 

Of a nebula expanding silently after a supernova’s explosion.

 

She should have picked astronomy up again. She used to love it. Just thinking about it brought a slow wave of nostalgia back from the middle of her memory’s ocean. Did she really remember all of the names of Jupiter’s moons? Maybe not all of them, since they were at about eighty. But at least the biggest four… Her mind felt foggy, lulled by Kim’s gentle voice.

 

Let’s see… There were Europa, Ganymede… Callisto, maybe? And… And… Io. Yes, the last one must have been Io.

 

Had they been people too? Were their names tied to stories and legends like the Pleiades and Orion? She had no idea, and she never thought she would have regretted knowing so little about them.

 

Kim surely knew. She could have asked him to tell her… He would have loved to, without a doubt. And his eyes would have shimmered with excitement… Oh, how she wanted to see that wonderful face he’d made, so happy, and bright, and enthusiastic… But she couldn’t ask now, not while he was singing…

 

Was he actually still singing? She’d lost track of the song while wandering lazily in her own thoughts.

 

She pulled herself back in the real world.

 

He’d stopped for a little (maybe it was an instrumental break), but was still humming. The vibrations that came fom his soft, unbinded sternum massaged her ear similarly to how his fingers circled and pressed her arm, almost as if trying to find a suitable alternative to the rocking of a cradle.

 

Niamh closed her eyes.

She opened them again with an extreme effort what she felt was a second later, part of the last strophe already gone.

 

She was so tired.

 

_“I must have gone to bed… Around the quarter after ten…”_

Had she not been too dozy to look at the clock, she would have known it was far later.

 

_“I sleep so much these days… I need to be in bed by then…”_

Tomorrow they would have gone to work as sleep-deprived wrecks.

 

_“Or maybe I read a while… The latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style…”_

They could have just called in sick and relaxed reading The Shadow Over Innsmouth together, since Kim hadn’t started it yet…

 

_“It’s funny but I had no sense of living without aim…”_

Her mind drifted to the image of a hunter chasing doves, followed by a scorpion.

 

_“The day before you came…”_

One of the doves looked a lot like her Nanna.

 

_“And turning out the light, I must have yawned and dragged my way through yet another night…”_

Her head felt heavy.

 

_“And rattling on the roof I maybe heard the sound of rain…”_

She loved the rain.

 

_“The day before you came.”_

 

Kim held Niamh a little closer, listening to her sleep.


End file.
